INTRODUCTION
Students at Janus Pannonius University from Pécs have the opportunity to attend the Writing and Research Skills seminar where everyone can learn about and improve writing skills. For the sessions students have some writing tasks to do, for example: preparing essays on topics suggested by the teacher or chosen by the students; and accomplishing a small-scale research paper.
During the Fall 1998 semester we used for several times William Zinsser’s book On Writing Well: An Informal Guide to Writing Non-Fiction, which was a great help for us in forming our writing style.
Zinsser is a free-lance writer, the author of humorous and non-fiction writings. He was a teacher as well: he taught even at Yale University. His main teaching and conception on writing well is to write as simply as possible and to avoid clutter. Cluttering is when a writer expresses ideas, thoughts with the help of more words than needed making confusing sentences. Simplicity is quite the contrary of clutter: it shows clear thinking. Clear and simple sentences are easy to understand but it is not always easy to produce them. Zinsser says: “Writing is hard work. A clear sentence is no accident. Very few sentences come out right the first time, or even the third time” (Zinsser 1998, 12).
In the chapter entitled ”Simplicity” from the book On Writing Well, Zinsser presents two pages of an earlier version of the same book and I found the way he simplified his sentences very exciting.
I thought it would be interesting and useful for me as well as for other students to compare the two versions and to see how a professional writer gets his final edition.
METHOD
As its title itself shows, the chapter ”Simplicity” deals with the importance of simple and clear writing and explains that “the secret of good writing is to strip every sentence to its cleanest components” (Zinsser 1998, 7).
As an example for how to simplify sentences, the author shows the reader on pages ten and eleven a piece of draft, an earlier version of the final, edited work. On the two pages of the draft we can see a text and a lot of corrections on it: words and sentences crossed out, some new words written between the lines replacing something dropped out.
I wanted to know how many words were dropped out from the text and how many were substituted with new words and expressions, so I counted every item from both versions. I was also curious to find out if the content of the final version changed as compared to the content of the draft.
RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
According to Zinsser, the draft shown on pages ten and eleven was already the fourth or fifth version and he could still find a great number of unnecessary words in it.
There were 538 words in the text shown on the two pages of the draft, and after the author revised it once more, he left out 123 elements, which means that almost one fourth of the text (22.8 % exactly) was left out finally. In spite of the large number of omitted words from the draft the final text does not change in meaning, it has the same content and meaning but it is shorter and more simple, thus it is easier to follow and to comprehend the ideas the author shares with his readers
There were only seventeen additions or substitutions. Zinsser replaced several phrases or even sentences with shorter terms, for example: constructions of a definite article and a noun were replaced by personal pronouns; sentences were substituted with verbs; adjectives were left out where the noun carried the meaning of the adjective; noun phrases were replaced by nouns and long verb phrases with short verbs with the same meaning. In three cases he left out complete sentences without any replacement.
A very common problem of both professional and amateur writers is the use of redundant adjectives, I mean the use of adjectives that are not necessary for the understanding of the noun they belong to. That is why I expected adjectives to be the most numerous among those items that were crossed out but I was wrong. They were on the third place on the list. The group of verbs was the leading one of the list containing different parts of speech. The most frequent types of omission were: the verb ”to be” and verbs in the infinitive form. See Table 1 to find out about the number of words belonging to different parts of speech.
Part of speech The number of left out items
Verbs 28
Pronouns 20
Adjectives 15
Adverbs 14
Nouns 13
Articles 8
Conjunctions 3
Others 22
Table 1: The number of omitted words belonging to certain parts of speech in decreasing
order
Zinsser considers revising to be very important. Revising our writings we can realize how many words and phrases can still be omitted, changed or replaced by shorter ones. He says: “Be grateful for everything you can throw away” (Zinsser 1998,18).
Simplicity assumes brevity and clarity of thoughts and expressions, clutter is everything that can be left out without altering the meaning of what we want to express.
CONCLUSION
Simplicity makes a writing valuable. Sentences with many unnecessary elements in them, very elaborate and confusing sentences, or simply: cluttered sentences, will make the reading difficult.
Zinsser in his work gives several writing tips for those who want to improve their writing style, for those who would like to learn how to be simple in our writings. He convinces us to revise all the time what we write and to drop out as many elements as needed. The most important thing according o him is to be as simple and clear as possible.
Everyone who wants to be read must think first of all of the reader, “this elusive creature” (Zinsser 1998, 9), whose attention must be captured. If the reader gets lost among the confusing ideas of a writing, he will stop reading.
Cluttered sentences make the reading difficult. Simple sentences are easy to understand and we must always try to simplify for the sake of good writing and for the sake of better understanding.
We must try to substitute long subordinate clauses with some verbs that contain the same meaning, to use adverbs and adjectives where they are required, to be attentive at nouns that already carry the meaning that can be expressed also with an adjective.
Showing posts with label Zinsser. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Zinsser. Show all posts
Tuesday, May 8, 2007
W 037 F
INTRODUCTION
Bits & Pieces. First-year English majors at JPU, who attended the "Writing and Research Skills" course, know that these words refer to a chapter from Zinsser's "On Writing Well", which contains the author's tips and suggestions about essay writing.
The application of these Zinsserian tips can help university students compose their proficiency essays, which is one of the four tasks that students are supposed to complete at the end of the second semester; it's a complex exercise and gives an authentic picture of their fluency in drafting. It aims to examine the students' writing skills, how they can make a well-organized, logical draft without serious grammatical mistakes and with a large vocabulary specific to their topic. The testees have the possibility to select a theme from 125 options and their task is to compose a four- or five- paragraph essay of about 450 words focusing on their chosen assignment.
In my research paper my aim is to find out whether the examinees have followed Zinsser's pieces of advice and whether the application of the tips have influenced the evaluation.
METHOD
I selected five proficiency tests with different scores (from 5 to 9) and analyzed them on the basis of Zinsser's "Bits and Pieces". While reading I concentrated on five view-points from "Bits and Pieces": the use of verbs, adverbs, adjectives, concept nouns and little qualifiers. Then I compared the essays and examined the differences between them relating to Zinsser's tips and their effect on the markers' evaluation.
RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
VERBS
The "Bits and Pieces" essay suggests the use of active verbs, because they are direct, short and vivid, while "a style that consists mainly of passive constructions, especially if the sentences are long, saps the reader's energy." (Zinsser 110)
The examinees of proficiency essays seem to take the advice of Zinsser, they rarely used passive verbs. The writer of the essay 59 ("How to find a boyfriend") didn't put any passive structures in the essay, and even in the essay 82 ("How to ruin a girlfriend") which contains the most passive verbs, can be found only 8 passives from 93 verbs.
All the five candidates used a lot of "be" forms in direct proportion to the number of verbs they used. The essay 82, who got the best points out of the five testees, applied the most verbs in the draft and 27 of them was one of the conjugations of "be".
The essay 59, that obtained the less scores from the five examined tests, selected only simple verbs and phrases to express his/her thoughts, like "find, have, ask, talk, go, change", and used them repeatedly, while the authors of the other essays chose more remarkable and meaningful verbs, which transmit more life and emotions. (For example: consider, bother, provide, distract, involve, reveal, determine, deserve, gaze, improve, murmure, appreciate.)
ADVERBS
According to Zinsser most adverbs are unnecessary, they often don't give any extra information to a verb, and cause clutter in the sentences. (111)
In the five proficiency tests we can observe that those testees who got less points sometimes used redundant adverbs such as "really", (" I don't really think", "I don't really care") while the 3 students who reached better evaluation applied more meaningful and less used adverbs like "desirously", "hopefully", "economically", "safely". The adequate selection and use of adverbs might have influenced the evaluation, since the ones who used them properly got higher scores for vocabulary. But there's many other components that had effects on the vocabulary scores, such as the use of adjectives.
ADJECTIVES
Zinsser provides similar tips about adjective use as about adverbs. It also refers to adjectives that many of them are redundant, because their concept is already in the noun. (112) There's another significant problem with the application of adjectives: "Most writers sow adjectives almost unconsciously into the soil of their prose to make it more lush and pretty....The adjective that exists solely as decoration is a self-indulgence for the reader." (112)
The five examinee rarely used unnecessary adjectives. In essay 59 the author chose the adjective "noisy" before "rock concert" - but it's obvious that a rock concert is noisy and doesn't give any new meaning to the word, such as the "rude remark" in essay 28 ("How to ruin a perfect Christmas"), because the word "remark" has already a negative connotation in itself. These two examinee used especially simple adjectives, as "different", "false", "careful" , and sometimes even trite and meaningless ones, for example: "important" or "real". a typical feature of the essay 28 is the repetition of the adjectives "perfect" (5 times) and "ideal" (3 times) in every case in connection with Christmas.
The other 3 testees applied more unique and significant adjectives, which makes the texts fascinating and easy-flowing. (For example: desperate, sufficient, independent and exotic) The writer of the essay 74 ("How to find a girlfriend") sometimes crams the draft with too many adjectives just to full up the lines and to decorate the words. One of his sentences contains 9 adjectives: "wonderful, understanding, caring, significant, hard, luxurious, splendid, exclusive, huge"; which means more than 25% of the sentence.
The author of the essay 82 used the more specific adjectives of his/her theme, and also the most unique and particular ones. ("unexperienced, confidental, jealous, problematic, ugly, unpredictable, masochist, wretched") This choice of adjectives makes the composition vivid and ironic at the same time.
LITTLE QUALIFIERS
As for little qualifiers, Zinsser suggests to neglect these meaningless and unsure small words, like "a bit", "a little", "sort of", "kind of", "rather", "quite", "very", "too", etc. "Every little qualifier whittles away some fraction of trust on the part of the reader." (113) With these small words the essay doesn't seem confident.
From this point of view all the students made an adequate essay, they carefully supervised their drafts and omitted these little qualifiers. I found them just in two writings. The author of essay 59 put "really" twice in the draft, which can be found in essay 74, too, as well as "very".
But we can observe many other phrases that express uncertainty in the 5 essays such as "possibly", "hopefully", "probably", "likely" and "potential".
CONCEPT NOUNS
Zinsser advises the use of verbs, that "tell what somebody did" instead of impersonal nouns that express a concept and makes sentences cold. These sentences usually don't contain working verbs - only "is" or "isn't".(118)
The 5 proficiency tests contain just few of these concept nouns, for example in the essay 74 ("How to find a girlfriend") the writer put a long sentence in the essay without any vivid verb in it: "Delicate questions about the candidates musical taste or favourite author are very adviseable and so is the invitation for a coffee to the buffet afterwards.", or I could cite the essay 82: "However, the use of this technique is not recommended, since the possible outcome is unpredictable, and at the same time can be dangerous, too."
But generally the examinees applied vivid verbs which push forward the sentence and it can be noticed mostly in the essay 59 and 28.
CONCLUSION
Having examined the 5 proficiency essays from five various point of views I realized that the 5 testees - consciously or unconsciously - tried to keep the Zinsserian pieces of advice. Just few of the students used redundant adjectives or adverbs, they tried to avoid little qualifiers and constant nouns, and paid attention to change passive structions into active ones in most cases. Probably the examinees found useful these 5 tips from the "Bits and Pieces" and Zinsser gave them help with his essay.
The evaluation of the two markers based on 5 requirements: focus, accuracy, vocabulary, paragraph organization and essay organization.
The use of verbs, adjectives and adverbs must have seriously influenced the evaluation of the essays. Those testees who put more particular and specific words and phrases in their tests, got higher scores for vocabulary and focus than that ones who applied only simple verbs or unnecessary adjectives and adverbs. The use of verbs effected mostly the evaluation, since the students who used a lot of verbs and paid attention to use active ones achieved the best results.
These point of views that I analyzed on the basis of "Bits and Pieces" didn't have much influence on the other 3 criteria of the proficiency essay, they didn't count in accuracy, paragraph- and essay organization scores, however, they might have effected the final evaluation.
Bits & Pieces. First-year English majors at JPU, who attended the "Writing and Research Skills" course, know that these words refer to a chapter from Zinsser's "On Writing Well", which contains the author's tips and suggestions about essay writing.
The application of these Zinsserian tips can help university students compose their proficiency essays, which is one of the four tasks that students are supposed to complete at the end of the second semester; it's a complex exercise and gives an authentic picture of their fluency in drafting. It aims to examine the students' writing skills, how they can make a well-organized, logical draft without serious grammatical mistakes and with a large vocabulary specific to their topic. The testees have the possibility to select a theme from 125 options and their task is to compose a four- or five- paragraph essay of about 450 words focusing on their chosen assignment.
In my research paper my aim is to find out whether the examinees have followed Zinsser's pieces of advice and whether the application of the tips have influenced the evaluation.
METHOD
I selected five proficiency tests with different scores (from 5 to 9) and analyzed them on the basis of Zinsser's "Bits and Pieces". While reading I concentrated on five view-points from "Bits and Pieces": the use of verbs, adverbs, adjectives, concept nouns and little qualifiers. Then I compared the essays and examined the differences between them relating to Zinsser's tips and their effect on the markers' evaluation.
RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
VERBS
The "Bits and Pieces" essay suggests the use of active verbs, because they are direct, short and vivid, while "a style that consists mainly of passive constructions, especially if the sentences are long, saps the reader's energy." (Zinsser 110)
The examinees of proficiency essays seem to take the advice of Zinsser, they rarely used passive verbs. The writer of the essay 59 ("How to find a boyfriend") didn't put any passive structures in the essay, and even in the essay 82 ("How to ruin a girlfriend") which contains the most passive verbs, can be found only 8 passives from 93 verbs.
All the five candidates used a lot of "be" forms in direct proportion to the number of verbs they used. The essay 82, who got the best points out of the five testees, applied the most verbs in the draft and 27 of them was one of the conjugations of "be".
The essay 59, that obtained the less scores from the five examined tests, selected only simple verbs and phrases to express his/her thoughts, like "find, have, ask, talk, go, change", and used them repeatedly, while the authors of the other essays chose more remarkable and meaningful verbs, which transmit more life and emotions. (For example: consider, bother, provide, distract, involve, reveal, determine, deserve, gaze, improve, murmure, appreciate.)
ADVERBS
According to Zinsser most adverbs are unnecessary, they often don't give any extra information to a verb, and cause clutter in the sentences. (111)
In the five proficiency tests we can observe that those testees who got less points sometimes used redundant adverbs such as "really", (" I don't really think", "I don't really care") while the 3 students who reached better evaluation applied more meaningful and less used adverbs like "desirously", "hopefully", "economically", "safely". The adequate selection and use of adverbs might have influenced the evaluation, since the ones who used them properly got higher scores for vocabulary. But there's many other components that had effects on the vocabulary scores, such as the use of adjectives.
ADJECTIVES
Zinsser provides similar tips about adjective use as about adverbs. It also refers to adjectives that many of them are redundant, because their concept is already in the noun. (112) There's another significant problem with the application of adjectives: "Most writers sow adjectives almost unconsciously into the soil of their prose to make it more lush and pretty....The adjective that exists solely as decoration is a self-indulgence for the reader." (112)
The five examinee rarely used unnecessary adjectives. In essay 59 the author chose the adjective "noisy" before "rock concert" - but it's obvious that a rock concert is noisy and doesn't give any new meaning to the word, such as the "rude remark" in essay 28 ("How to ruin a perfect Christmas"), because the word "remark" has already a negative connotation in itself. These two examinee used especially simple adjectives, as "different", "false", "careful" , and sometimes even trite and meaningless ones, for example: "important" or "real". a typical feature of the essay 28 is the repetition of the adjectives "perfect" (5 times) and "ideal" (3 times) in every case in connection with Christmas.
The other 3 testees applied more unique and significant adjectives, which makes the texts fascinating and easy-flowing. (For example: desperate, sufficient, independent and exotic) The writer of the essay 74 ("How to find a girlfriend") sometimes crams the draft with too many adjectives just to full up the lines and to decorate the words. One of his sentences contains 9 adjectives: "wonderful, understanding, caring, significant, hard, luxurious, splendid, exclusive, huge"; which means more than 25% of the sentence.
The author of the essay 82 used the more specific adjectives of his/her theme, and also the most unique and particular ones. ("unexperienced, confidental, jealous, problematic, ugly, unpredictable, masochist, wretched") This choice of adjectives makes the composition vivid and ironic at the same time.
LITTLE QUALIFIERS
As for little qualifiers, Zinsser suggests to neglect these meaningless and unsure small words, like "a bit", "a little", "sort of", "kind of", "rather", "quite", "very", "too", etc. "Every little qualifier whittles away some fraction of trust on the part of the reader." (113) With these small words the essay doesn't seem confident.
From this point of view all the students made an adequate essay, they carefully supervised their drafts and omitted these little qualifiers. I found them just in two writings. The author of essay 59 put "really" twice in the draft, which can be found in essay 74, too, as well as "very".
But we can observe many other phrases that express uncertainty in the 5 essays such as "possibly", "hopefully", "probably", "likely" and "potential".
CONCEPT NOUNS
Zinsser advises the use of verbs, that "tell what somebody did" instead of impersonal nouns that express a concept and makes sentences cold. These sentences usually don't contain working verbs - only "is" or "isn't".(118)
The 5 proficiency tests contain just few of these concept nouns, for example in the essay 74 ("How to find a girlfriend") the writer put a long sentence in the essay without any vivid verb in it: "Delicate questions about the candidates musical taste or favourite author are very adviseable and so is the invitation for a coffee to the buffet afterwards.", or I could cite the essay 82: "However, the use of this technique is not recommended, since the possible outcome is unpredictable, and at the same time can be dangerous, too."
But generally the examinees applied vivid verbs which push forward the sentence and it can be noticed mostly in the essay 59 and 28.
CONCLUSION
Having examined the 5 proficiency essays from five various point of views I realized that the 5 testees - consciously or unconsciously - tried to keep the Zinsserian pieces of advice. Just few of the students used redundant adjectives or adverbs, they tried to avoid little qualifiers and constant nouns, and paid attention to change passive structions into active ones in most cases. Probably the examinees found useful these 5 tips from the "Bits and Pieces" and Zinsser gave them help with his essay.
The evaluation of the two markers based on 5 requirements: focus, accuracy, vocabulary, paragraph organization and essay organization.
The use of verbs, adjectives and adverbs must have seriously influenced the evaluation of the essays. Those testees who put more particular and specific words and phrases in their tests, got higher scores for vocabulary and focus than that ones who applied only simple verbs or unnecessary adjectives and adverbs. The use of verbs effected mostly the evaluation, since the students who used a lot of verbs and paid attention to use active ones achieved the best results.
These point of views that I analyzed on the basis of "Bits and Pieces" didn't have much influence on the other 3 criteria of the proficiency essay, they didn't count in accuracy, paragraph- and essay organization scores, however, they might have effected the final evaluation.
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